Curse of NCCLOLs?

Just found this little web snippett.

It concerns someone called Helen Spencer who used to be Director of Customer Services for Nottingham City Council. She was the Director of the service area that included Housing Benefits and Welfare Rights when I was working there and when I resigned.

She was the one who heard my complaint against Lisa 'Lying Fat Arse' Black. She said that Lisa's decisions that I had 'harassed' people were 'well reasoned'. As such she whitewashed over the gaping cracks and made it impossible for me to return to work.

Funnily enough, at my Employment Tribunal, witness after witness were falling over themselves to deny that Black's decisions that I had harrassed people meant that I had actually, you know, harassed people. 'Well reasoned' eh Helen?

Anyway, the above web snippett appears to be Helen Spencer telling the world that NCC had made her redundant. It's dated 8 December 2009, which is about 2 weeks after my Employment Tribunal had ended. The very same Tribunal where Spencer had cheerily defended her and NCC's actions as being beyond reproach.

I wonder how she felt about that when they told her? Maybe she wondered when the decision had been made? Maybe the decision had been made some weeks before but NCC had delayed informing her in case it affected her performance at my Tribunal?

You have to say, schadenfreude doesn't get any tougher than this *stifles giggles*.

So, of the people who fucked me over a significant number of people have lost their jobs, some under a bit of a cloud. Two of the people who made false complaints about me were sacked for gross misconduct, Michael Williams, the Corporate Director at the time retired and was subsequently seriously criticised in the District Auditor's report into the Future Jobs Fund fiasco. And now poor old Helen, only days after she tried to sell me down the river at my Tribunal hearing.

Who's next for the Curse of NCCLOLs?

Tales from the Tribunal Part 7 - What Did it Cost?

Running my employment tribunal case clearly cost NCC quite a lot of money. In this post I'm going to attempt to put a rough guess on how much that was.

What should have been the easiest bit to work out wasn't as simple as I'd hoped. I put in a Freedom of Information request asking how much had been spent on external barristers representing NCC during the dates of my hearing. The answer that came back was £14,050 + VAT but that this was for 2 cases. So how much was for mine?

To be honest, I would have been skeptical at that figure for my case alone. I had 10 full days of a London barrister's time all to myself. One of those days would have been covered by the briefing fee (see below) but still I wouldn't have expected any change from £20k. Still we have to take them at their word I suppose...

Notwithstanding the above, I expect the figure was quoted was mostly down to my case. For my first piece of guesswork I'm going to assume that the work involved on the other case was just a day, maybe a pre-hearing. Certainly I didn't see NCC listed in any other cases on the days I was there, although my case wasn't heard on every day of each week.

So, 90% (for the 9 days of my case) of £14,050 plus VAT at 15% makes £14,605. That's the first bit done.

Now, according to Employment Tribunal Claims, Tactics and Precedents, the way that Barristers charge their fees includes a briefing fee for preparation, which normally includes the first day, followed by daily 'refreshers' for the rest of the hearing. It suggests a rough rule of thumb for the brief fee to cover one day's prep for two days of hearing. So about half as much again basically. All in all that works out to about £22k, so we'll use that for our working figure of how much the barrister cost.

As well as their barrister, NCC also had one of their litigation assistants there every day, apart from a couple of days when our old mate Jon Ludford- Thomas took her place. For ease of guessalculation I'll ignore his extra costs and work on the basis that the LA earns about £25k pa and was there all the time. I reckon that adds another £1300.

Now, right at the start of the hearing, I wrote a somewhat sarcastic post about how many hangers on there were at the hearing, including some very senior staff indeed. At the time I guessed this cost about £1500 for the day and similar levels of attendence conttinued throughout the hearing apart from the last day. So, although this wouldn't have involved any additional expenditure it still represents a cost in terms of time lost to local taxpayers so I'm including a figure of £13,500 for lost time caused by people who fancied a nice day out. However, this does include time spent giving evidence.

So, by my book that makes very nearly £38k for the cost of the hearing itself.

But of course, that's not the end of it because there were three case management discussions where NCC were represented by JLT. Let's guess that took up 1.5 days of his time including preparation and that he earns £40k. That's another £300. Plus £300 for their share of the medical report costs. And of course all of those witnesses (14 in all including a corporate director and two directors) each had to give a statement which, including someone to take each of their statements (presumably the litigation assistant) comes to around £800 at a very conservative estimate and assuming an hour for each statement. Then of course there's £2500 that went to me in the pathetically small damages I got for my life and career being ruined. Lets call that lot about £4k all in.

So, all in all, I estimate my case cost NCC something in the region of £42,000. Which of course gets paid by local taxpayers. Ironically including me. As for the cost of all the BS that led up to it? Frankly that just doesn't bear thinking about.

Tales from the Tribunal Part 6 - That Statement of Reasons in Full

Yes, its finally arrived. I have the full Statement of Reasons for my Tribunal decision (note, big file).

I'll add a few highlights here as, being 50 pages long, you may not wish to read through the whole lot. If you do, it might help to let you know that the first 8 pages is mostly legal stuff which is all very interesting for some but others may wish to scroll on by.

"The Claimant's [me] evidence is that Ms [Lisa] Black had given him the impression that it was all his fault and said that she had considered moving him out of his post. The claimant referred to disfunctionality (sic) in the team; to lack of support and added that:

"If various grievances had run to timetable he would have been able to make more progress."

It is the Claimant's evidence that Ms Black responded by saying words to the effect:

"Well, why haven't you then?"

Ms Black confirmed the meeting took place, confirmed the purpose of it and also confirmed that she had raised the possibility of moving the claimant, but denied that she had used the words referred to and had sneered at him. The Tribunal having considered the evidence preferred that of the claimant because he had a clearer recollection of events and generally the Tribunal found the claimant to be a truthful witness, not given to exaggeration..."

That's from pp16-17. Note how the Tribunal makes the point that they found me a truthful witness, at no stage in the decision did they say the same about Lisa Black.

"A further ground of complaint is that the Claimant contends that the Respondent failed to give him the support he needed in his role as Welfare Rights Team leader. The Tribunal notes that, of the three complainants, all of them sought to invoke the Harassment and Discrimination procedure after they had become aware of matters the Claimant as their Team leader had either raised with them or was seeking to raise with them and which might have resulted in disciplinary action being pursued. This was his job, it was his responsibility as Line Manager to raise such matters with them."

That's from p42. I took that as the Tribunal's recognition that the three complainant's may not have been of entirely honest intent when making complaints about me.

"When dealing with the case of Ms Roy, Ms Black called for further investigation to be carried out to address an allegation by Ms Roy of sex discrimination by the claimant. When Ms Black received the additional information she concluded the sex discrimination complaint was without foundation. However, on reviewing the additional information available to her it should have been clear...that it addressed wider issues of the Claimant's management and called into question the motivation of the complainant Ms Roy. The Tribunal finds it difficult to believe and accept that Ms Black did not recognise the significance of the information before her and, in particular, the relevance of it to the claimant...

...Ms Black had met with the claimant on two occasions but on neither occasion was she prompted to provide him with a copy of the report notwithstanding it being clear from the evidence that a copy of the addendum report must have been made available to Ms Roy prior to the step 2 meeting...which contradicts evidence before the Tribunal that there was concern about disclosure of the report because one of the witnesses who contributed to the report feared reprisals [from Ms Roy]...the Tribunal is not clear on the evidence before it upon what basis Ms Black decided it could be disclosed to Ms Roy (but not to the claimant).

From pp42-43. During the internal procedures Lisa Black tried to claim that it 'didn't occur to her' to give me a copy of this extra information. Bollocks.

"There was also a matter of complaint by the Claimant in relation to a breach of confidentiality by Emma Hodgett. At the time it was assumed she had said things to Gary Ward, a Trade Union representative, and which was in breach of confidentiality...Ms Hodgett before the Tribunal denied [on oath] that she had breached her professional standing and that she had said anything to Mr Ward. At the time, the Investigating Officer spoke to her on the telephone and he did not think it appropriate to obtain a written statement from her. Possibly had he done so, in the light of the evidence before this Tribunal...it might have been established that the evidence of Mr Ward was in some way flawed."

During internal procedures Gary Ward said in a statement that Emma Hodgett slagged me off. However, Emma denied on oath that she had said anything about me. Gary Ward didn't appear at the Tribunal despite NCC relying quite heavily on his statements made during internal proceedings. Basically, he made it up.

I'll be writing a separate article about Unison's actions during my sorry time at NCC. For now let's just say I think that some of their actions went beyond honest advocacy for their members.

Well, that's just a few small extracts from the decision. I would have added more but it would have meant retyping reams of material so I just picked out a few bits that hopefully stand on their own.

Tales from the Tribunal 5...To Stupidity - and Beyond!

We are curently broadcasting to you from Nottingham Central Library which has a certain irony...

Anyway. You may remember I posted back in November about a little mystery regarding whether a certain solicitor had neglected to ask a certain manager for information that the Employment Tribunal had ordered him to provide? Well it's been solved, the solicitor has coughed.

You might have guessed that the manager concerned was Lisa Black and the solicitor was my old mate John Ludford-Thomas, now reduced to making pointless threats at bloggers.

When I wrote back to him about his silly threat I added an extra bit which I didn't post to the blog as follows -

"PS While I've got your attention please can you confirm whether you did in fact ask Lisa Black for her notes of the Karen ******* and Fizz ***** step 2 meetings as you were required to do by the disclosure order issued by Employment Judge MacMillan on 3 September 2009.

You will be aware that Lisa Black stated on oath that you did not approach her despite your clear knowledge that she was the deciding officer in these cases and that this was the reason why her notes were not provided, causing Nottingham City Council to be in breach of that order."

Well he's replied and here it is -

"With regard to the manuscript notes of the evidence given by Dave Miles to the step 2 meetings in the grievances raised by Karen ******* and Fizz *****, I can confirm that I did not ask Lisa Black for any such notes because I believed I had the notes of these meetings amongst paperwork already obtained. As you know, the notes I had were disclosed to you as part of the bundle of documents for the Employment Tribunal Full Hearing in your case."

What a silly senior solicitor he is. He'd been in charge of the case for over 9 months by this stage so he damn well knew about the full extent of Lisa Black's involvement.

It reminds me of a pivotal issue in one of the internal disputes that Lisa decided when I was still working at NCC.

When there are two sides to a dispute, which there usually is, a drunken amoeba would be capable of realising that all evidence should be provided to both sides.

Not Lisa Black. She commissioned a whole raft of statements from other team members (seriously compromising my privacy in the process but that's by the by) without telling me but passing it all over to the other side. I didn't find out until after she had made her decision.

Her explanation of this was that it "didn't occur" to her to give me the information as well. She wasn't even embarrassed. Remember this is a Head of Service here.

It's this rush to own up to complete stupidity that makes me a little but suspicious that some people see doing so as better than admitting that they did something deliberately in bad faith. I have to say I ran into it quite a lot during my disputes with NCC.

Thing is, I've always assumed that they were full of BS. However, I'm now honestly beginning to think that maybe they are all really that stupid.

Tales from the Tribunal Part 4

I was going to wait until I received the employment tribunal's full statement of reasons for its decision before doing another TftT but that's probably going to be some time so I thought I'd write about one of the issues where NCC fell down big style.

It concerns the issue of weighing up evidence and the related matter of deciding the credibility of witnesses. Throughout the tribunal it became crystal clear that, when deciding disputes via its own internal procedures, NCC doesn't bother with any of that.

Take two examples of how Lisa Black dealt with this when deciding on some complaints made against me.

First example. Imagine that you have three witnesses stating that scenario A was true and one witness saying that scenario B was true. Add in the fact that the one witness arguing for scenario B has a strong interest in that being accepted because if scenario A wins the day they are likely to face disciplinary action. Assume that, on the face of it, both scenarios A and B are plausible but contradictory.

Now a sensible intelligent person would conclude that, on the balance of probability, scenario A is correct. You couldn't really go any other way in the vast majority of circumstances.

Now guess what Lisa Black decided? Fair play, she couldn't quite go as far as saying that scenario B was correct but she decided that it was "ambiguous" whether scenario A or B was correct.

WTF?

It just so happened that this issue had major repercussions on my ability to return to work as my position would have been seriously undermined.

Second example. In one dispute a certain witness made a rather extreme claim that, to be honest, just reading it in isolation would make you burst out laughing. This claim was flatly contradicted by five other witnesses.

In the same dispute another witness made a very specific claim in their written statement but changed their story very significantly in the internal decision meeting. This same witness made another claim that Lisa Black said later that she had disregarded.

During cross-examination Lisa Black made it absolutely clear that at no stage had it even entered her head to consider whether the credibility of either of these witnesses was possibly compromised. During the tribunal she gave a fairly robust explanation why she believed the second witness's account in the main but then couldn't explain how she squared that with disregarding the second claim he had made.

Believe me this is all basic stuff. In any dispute you will get contradictory accounts as to what happened and you have to make a decision as to which is the correct one. You have to give rational reasons why you have made that decision. If you can't evaluate evidence then you might just as well spin the bottle.

As if it were not bad enough that the Head of the Housing Benefits service cannot understand the importance of such basic decision making skills, the decisions of hers that these scenarios (along with many others) fed into were appealed via NCC's grievance procedure. There are two stages to this and in my case each stage was heard by a Director.

At the first stage, heard by Hugh White who is Director of Sport, Lisa's decisions were largely upheld although he did criticise the length of time taken to make them. At the second stage Helen Shipway, the Director of Customer Services, went as far as saying that she couldn't overturn Lisa Black's decisions because they were so well reasoned.

Under cross-examination both Directors had to admit that it did not occur to them that Lisa's decisions may be flawed because there had been no consideration of the credibility of witnesses. In fact Hugh White was almost pathetic to watch as it became increasingly clear that this was a totally alien concept for him, he looked more and more at sea until by the end of his time on the stand he looked like he needed his mum. I found myself checking under his chair expecting to find a little trail of wee but thankfully he was clear in that respect.

This might seem a little dry and lawyerish but it potentially affects anybody currently working at NCC. This total lack of rationality in decision making will potentially affect any internal council processes such as grievance, harassment and discrimination or disciplinary procedures. Take it from someone who knows, such matters can be career destroying and I know I'm not the only one this has happened to.

What's worse is that if you take out the rationality you open up far more scope for nefarious types to manipulate the processes for their own ends. Essentially there are people working at NCC who are effectively untouchable because they have their feet under the table with the right people. They have nothing to fear of people complaining about them because it's so easy for their mates to come to the rescue. I am 100% convinced that Lisa Black is one of the people who benefits from this situation, however, once the decision making got outside of NCC to an employment tribunal she could no longer rely on her protectors and she doesn't come out of it looking good.

Of course the final aspect of this is that NCC's Legal Services didn't see any of this coming. They were absolutely confident of winning and spent who knows how much on a London barrister for what was originally going to be a 12 day hearing. As I've pointed out before, only a tiny number of employment tribunal cases against NCC get as far as a full hearing, the vast majority are settled.

It is essential that Nottingham City Council initiates a comprehensive retraining programme for the people it charges with the huge responsibility of officiating over formal internal disputes. There should also be an investigation of a sample of past cases to establish those who have the least ability to hear cases properly and ensure that they do not hear any further cases until the council has satisfied itself that they have been brought up to scratch.

Not only does getting it wrong cost a fortune, it ruins people's lives. I think NCC has got just a little bit too casual about both.

Tales from the Tribunal Part 3

It seems that Housing Benefits supremo Lisa Black wasn't happy about my likening of her to Little Britain character Marjories Dawes so she tried to get her own back when she was giving evidence at my tribunal.

The judge asked her whether she had thought to answer an email I had sent her when I was still employed by NCC but off sick. She said that she didn't because the email was rude and insulting and she didn't think there was anything she could have said.

She then said that this view was reinforced by the fact that at the time I sent her the email I was blogging about her being like a 'comedy character'. She had her special 'outraged' face on when she said it.

I then pointed out that I didn't even start the blog until November 2008 and the email was sent in April 2008 so there was no way I was saying that about her at that time and in fact was no longer even employed by NCC when I started this blog.

This made her look like a proper charlie. Having attended the tribunal every day up to that point she no longer felt the need to do so after this.

Funnily enough, if the verbal judgment we got on Wednesday was anything to go by, the Tribunal agreed with quite a lot of what I said in that email.

Tales from the Tribunal Part 2

An interesting mystery still remains from my tribunal experience.

First, a little background. During the preparation of the evidence bundle for an employment tribunal either party might want to see evidence that only the other party has. Most of the time if you ask for it you get it and everyone gets on fine.

However, on occasions, one party may not wish to hand evidence over. There can be very good reasons for this, the documents requested may include details of other workers and the employer may not think they are relevant to the case, or it may be considered that you're going on a fishing trip. In such circumstances the party wanting to see the documents will need to request a disclosure order from the tribunal and usually a case management discussion will be held and you are expected to justify why you need the info.

This was the situation I found myself in on 3 September, I wanted to see some notes of meetings and NCC didn't want me to have them. In the end the judge ordered a partial disclosure for notes that related to a particular person and a bundle of notes duly arrived some days later. I presumed that was all there was. One of NCC's senior solicitors represented them at this case management discussion.

Moving on to the second day of the full tribunal hearing (or might have been the third, not sure, it's a bit of a blur now) I was being cross examined by NCC's barrister when we had another of those 'rabbit out of the hat' moments. Apparently one of the witnesses (who is a rather senior manager) suddenly remembered that they had some notes of a meeting which proved beyond doubt what a nasty man I was.

Not really good enough, I said, I at least need to look at them overnight, which the judge agreed to. The notes were provided and I put them away to look at later.

You can imagine my surprise when I got home and looked at the notes and found that they clearly should have been provided under the disclosure order. Very naughty. Why hadn't they been provided earlier? Was it the senior manager who kept them back or the senior solicitor?

Anyway, moving on to the next week and it was my turn to cross examine NCC's witnesses and the senior manager took the stand. First question I asked was why she hadn't provided the notes as ordered and, quick as a flash she said that nobody had asked her to. I clarified that the senior solicitor had never asked for the notes and she confirmed that was the case. She said all this on oath.

So you see we are left with a little mystery. Do we believe the witness on oath saying nobody asked her for the notes (and thus selling a senior member of NCC's legal team down the river) or do we assume that a senior solicitor would not be so stupid as to fail to comply with an order of the tribunal, seeing as that would arguably be a breach of the Solicitors' Code of Conduct rule 11.02. Especially when they had been in charge of the case for 9 months.

I don't know, the only way I can think of to get to the bottom of this is to make a complaint about the senior solicitor to the Solicitors Regulation Authority who presumably will be able to investigate and establish the facts. It's more work though and I'm not sure I can be bothered which is why I've left the names out of this story. For now.

What do you think folks? Thumbs up or thumbs down?

Tales from the Tribunal Part 1

So. I won an employment tribunal case against Nottingham City Council, my former employer. I'll be writing about different aspects of the case for a while but in my usual haphazard, when-I-feel-like-it way.

My blog made a bit of a guest appearance during the hearing. The barrister decided out of the blue that my blog demonstrated that I exhibited 'a certain turn of phrase'.

Think about that, he was trying to argue that because I write disrespectful sweary stuff on the internets then I must talk like that at work and to the people I managed. Which is obviously bollocks.

I should point out that it is extremely bad form to pull rabbits out of the hat like that at a tribunal hearing, you are expected to agree a bundle of evidence before the hearing and to exchange witness statements and there was no inkling of my blog having any relevence in these documents. The barrister claimed that he had no choice because the blog only went up "yesterday".

Which again is bollocks as the blog has been going for nearly a year or so now, when challenged he claimed he meant my most recent post which was clearly about the tribunal. Frankly if he'd wanted disrespectful sweary stuff he'd have been better off talking about this one.

He then went on to argue that, because I was capable of writing a blog and maintaining a photo website then I couldn't possibly have a mental health problem so serious as to count as a disability. To be fair he was on stronger ground here in that at least it was relevant but he quoted a passage from my photo website which was written months ago, somewhat undermining his reason for bringing up my web presence on the day.

In other words this was pure gamesmanship and says a lot about the sort of organisation NCC is when they'll stoop to tactics like that. And that's not the only dodginess they got up to either, more on that soon.

A Lovely Day Out

Word reaches me of an employment tribunal that started recently.

The respondent (that's the employer) decided to call over 10 witnesses which meant that they all had to turn up for the start. This included some VERY senior managers, one of whom earns over £140k.

After about an hour some of these witnesses apparently left as they weren't needed that day.

This still left two really rather senior managers, two human resources officers and a human resources manager who stayed for the whole day. A rough guess of the cost of this is probably between £1k and £1.5k. Just for this one day. They didn't do or say anything, they just sat and listened.

This does not include the barrister's fee or the assistant he had with him. Rough guess at the cost of this would be between £2k and £3k although at least they presumably did something.

There are apparently quite a few days of this tribunal left. Rumours of a visit by the Queen and the Battle of Britain flypast are so far unsubstantiated.

Who would this employer be you might be wondering, who indulges in such largesse?

I'll give you a clue. If you're reading this there's a pretty good chance you're helping to pay for this lovely day out.

Update 26/11 As you probably guessed this was my own tribunal. It went on for 9 days and there was at least 5 NCC staff there each day, usually including at least one Director.

Oh yeah, I won...